Final Fantasy VI vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs Mortal Kombat II 2009
Results Round Two Thursday, May 14th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis For the second time in a week, we had the poll result do a near-perfect staircase; ie, the match is barely worth commenting on. But unlike the Fallout 3 > Halo 3 match, this had an unbelievably fun first five minutes. Because for five minutes, Link's Awakening scared the bejeezus out of Final Fantasy 6 and kept the match even. FF6 obviously went on to win in staircase fashion, but a ton of damage was done in that five minutes. Remember when FF6 led LTTP for a few hours in 2004, and it was more or less the beginning of the end for LTTP? Same deal here, but backwards. Any and all FF6 > LTTP pipe dreams died in those five minutes, regardless of any splitting LTTP would deal with. If you let Link's Awakening threaten you for even five minutes, your odds of beating Link to the Past in the divisional final are flat-out zero. Nothing. Especially when you've looked like crap for two rounds going in. I don't know when or why FF6 inherited FF7's voting trends, but they don't work the same. FF7 is a demigod in game contests, it's allowed to suck early. 6 is not. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction I'm afraid I have to agree that this isn't going to be an especially thrilling match. Which is a weird thing to say considering that the top two franchises on the site are represented, and so is another in the top five(ish)! FF6 really disappointed me last time around, so you think that would be something to watch for, but even there I'm not sold... Sonic is obviously very Nintendo these days and then the original MKs are generally associated with the Genesis, so already we're talking about 6 getting the full advantage of a sore thumb against plenty of overlap; even pushing up near the 40% it managed last time wouldn't necessarily blow me away. Zelda I guess has more to prove since its once again in a less favorable position, but even with a strong showing here it would be tough to get excited, what with LttP dropping by to rain on the parade next round. Bah. I suppose the most interesting thing to watch for will be if Sonic 2 can match MMX's performance from last round. And I think it'll have a good chance to do so! Just like 4 before it, 6 has been given a very underwhelming picture here while LA is kind of in the same "non iconic" boat as Mario 3, so I wouldn't expect something great like what we saw out of Mario 1 or World or LttP tonight. And MK looks pretty stylin' as well- maybe they'll be able to keep it close to Zelda than most are thinking, allowing FF to run away with the win in the process. I'll make that my final decision. * Final Fantasy VI - 36.73% * Zelda: Link's Awakening - 25.80% * Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 19.99% * Mortal Kombat II - 17.48% ...errr, not so sure about that pick now that I look it over again. Oh well! Next Day Review Welp, appears as though I just about called this one correctly- FF6 is coming quite close to matching its R1 percentage, but even so no one seems to be at all impressed. Unfortunately I was way off on Zelda. And MK2. And Sonic. Bah! Uhh, not much else to say about that result (except that this was way too close to the dreaded 40/30/20/10 split for my taste). External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches